Time: Monday October 28, 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM

Venue: IB 2028

Speaker: Ghassan Moazzin, Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the School of Humanities (Department of History) at the University of Hong Kong

Abstract

This research project aims to reconstruct the history of China’s electrical and electronics industries between the late 19th century and the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. Situated at the intersection of economic and business history, the history of technology and global history, this project traces the introduction and adaptation of electrical technology and electrical appliances — first by multinational and then by Chinese businesses — in modern China. In addition to its primary focus on the business history of the two industries, the study will also reconstruct Chinese consumers’ use and integration of electrical goods into their daily lives and how businesses interacted with those consumers in order to understand the development of China as a market for electrical goods. In sum, this study aims to explain the role that the electrical and electronics industries played in the electrification of modern China and how the two industries can be situated in the broader development of Chinese business and the Chinese economy during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Speaker Bio:

Ghassan Moazzin is Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the School of Humanities (Department of History) at the University of Hong Kong. At the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences he is the co-convenor of the Chinese Business History research cluster. He is the author of the award-winning book Foreign Banks and Global Finance in Modern China: Banking on the Chinese Frontier, 1870-1919 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022). His work has also appeared in a number of journals, such as Modern Asian Studies, Business History Review and Enterprise & Society.